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How to Recycle Old Computer Equipment

January 5, 2006

If you're wondering what to do with your old and beaten computer equipment, the kind of stuff that is essentially a useless pile of plastic and heavy metals, I stumbled across one option at my local Starbucks (which one, you ask, all of them, I think). Hewlett Packard (HP) offers a service where for a relatively small fee, they'll come by your house and pick up computer and computer-related hardware, and it doesn't even have to be HP equipment.

You can get all the details here. To get an idea of the cost, I used their estimator to price pickup on an inkjet printer, a PC with monitor, a PDA, and an old router. The total came to $98, which seems like a bargain for the environment. (Imagine if we added a small recycling fee to the upfront cost of computers and other electronic gear and then used the fee to fund a public or private recycling effort along these lines? Maybe even overcharge on the upfront fee and offer a small rebate for each item turned in? Probably smacks too much of socialism, but one can dream.)